Cons: No audio-out jacks; cumbersome vol- ume control; no power indicator; required cables cost extra.
Company: CD Technology.
Requires: Mac Plus; System 6.0.
List price: $895; bundled with Microsoft Office CD ROM $1295.
NEC Intersect CDR-72
Pros: Good audio facilities.
Cons: Slower than the other drives; required driver software costs extra.
Company: NEC Technologies.
Requires: Mac Plus; System 6.0.
List price: $999; driver software $99.
TXM-3201A1-MAC
Pros: Good access time.
Cons: No audio-out jacks; cumbersome volume control; no power indicator; required cables and software drivers cost extra.
Company: Toshiba America Information Systems.
Requires: Mac Plus; System 6.0.
List price: $995; Macintosh-compatibility kit $130.
Apple led the way with CD ROM in the Macintosh world by introducing the AppleCD SC player in 1988; it was a good drive that had the usual Apple drawback -- it was expensive ($1199). As CD ROM has gained in popularity, Apple has dropped the price on its drive to $899 and several third-party drives have come on the market.
I evaluated three of these new drives, from Toshiba, CD Technology, and NEC, and discovered that you can now buy better performance than Apple's for the same price. My pick, the CD Technology Porta-Drive, is smaller, faster, and portable, yet costs the same as the AppleCD SC, although at the cost of some convenience features.
TOSHIBA TXM-3201-A1
Toshiba's CD ROM drive is a compact unit with a footprint that's about the same as that of a Mac SE. It has a minijack on the front panel for headphones, and a three-position volume-control switch, which lets you choose between quiet, OK, and a bit too loud. A rotary volume dial would be much better. The front panel also has a drive-access light and an eject button, which is disabled by the software driver.
Missing is a power-indicator light. As it is now, the only easy way to tell that the drive is on is by pushing a CD into the unit; if it slides in easily, the drive is on. The drive has no preamp audio-out jacks; so to use the drive as an audio CD player, you have to use headphones or an adapter with your speakers.
There are two SCSI connectors on the rear panel, the drive is not terminated, and the SCSI ID can be changed via DIP switches. The drive requires an expensive ($130), separately priced Macintosh compatibility kit, which consists of the driver software and the necessary SCSI cables.
Toshiba doesn't write its own software drivers, it purchases them from OMI.
The version I reviewed, 1.2, worked fine for the most part, but has a bug that prevents it from seeking and accessing a portion of an audio CD longer than one hour. The driver ignores requests to seek to positions higher than 60:00; although if you start playing before the 60:00 mark, it will continue to play through just fine. Another drawback of the 1.2 driver is that it will not mount a CD ROM as an AppleShare volume. At press time Toshiba had promised to ship a bug fix by fall.
The Toshiba and CD Technology drives share the same Toshiba drive mechanism, and this mechanism is the winner in speed tests among currently shipping CD ROM drives, easily beating drives from NEC and Apple. An average hard disk, however, delivers access times of 28 milliseconds; a blazingly fast CD ROM unit's access time is measured in hundreds of milliseconds. I used two simple, real-world tests; copying a large (4MB) HyperCard stack to a hard disk, and opening the same stack from the Finder. I did each test several times, with the Mac's RAM cache turned off.
CD TECHNOLOGY PORTA-DRIVE T3201
As its name says, the Porta-Drive is designed to be carried with you. It's the smallest and lightest of the three drives tested, partly because the AC power supply is a separate box that you plug into the drive's rear panel.
The Porta-Drive shares the same drive mechanism as the Toshiba, hence the same performance figures. However, the Porta-Drive comes with a later version of the OMI software driver (1.3), which allows it to randomly access an audio CD longer than 60 minutes and fixes the AppleShare problem. At press time, CD Technology stated that it plans to revise its drive hardware to include stereo preamp jacks, a push-button SCSI-ID setting switch, and a power indicator.
Disappointingly, CD Technology sells the SCSI cable and terminator separately for $40, rather than including it with the drive, although driver software is included with the player. An optional $200 battery pack and a $60 carrying bag are also available.
The $895 Porta-Drive is offered in a bundle with the Microsoft Office CD ROM for another $400.The CD ROM includes Microsoft Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Mail, plus an extensive HyperCard-based documentation system, a complete set of Adobe screen fonts, and megabytes of other goodies (see Macworld, Reviews, June 1990.) Microsoft Office lists for $949, so bundled with Porta-Drive it's a great deal. CD Technology has extended this offer indefinitely but could change this policy at any time, so check with the company before you buy.
NEC INTERSECT CDR-72
The NEC CD ROM drive is nicely designed, with a front-panel headphone jack and a rotary volume control that's much more convenient than the three-position volume switch on the other two drives. It also has a power switch and a power indicator on the front panel. The rear panel sports audio-out jacks, a switch to set the drive to accept either 110 or 220 volts, a set of DIP switches that set the SCSI ID, and the two SCSI connectors. The drive is not terminated.
NEC, however, sells the driver software necessary to use the CD as a $99 "option" -- a disadvantage, since there is nothing optional about it. This package includes the driver software and Music Box, an application or DA (both are supplied) that plays audio CDs, although the NEC driver also supports Apple's Audio CD Access INIT and CD Remote DA.
The NEC drive was quite a bit slower than the other two, taking twice as long to open my HyperCard test stack (the Communications stack from Broderbund's Whole Earth Catalog CD). NEC's stack-copying speed was also slower than the other drives' (see "CD ROM Drives Compared").
THE FINAL SPIN
The state of the CD ROM drive market seems to be much like that of Macintosh hard disks a few years ago. Because there aren't that many to choose from, manufacturers can get away with charging extra for required components like driver software and SCSI cables. And prices for these drives are still high.
The NEC drive wins points over the Toshiba and CD Technology units for its better audio facilities, but falls to the rear of the group because of its slower speed and expensive "optional" software. The Toshiba and CD Technology drives are both good units, but I'd pick the CD Technology unit by a nose because it's less expensive, can be made portable with the accessory battery pack, and takes up less space when it's on the desktop.
And if you need the applications in Microsoft Office, the Porta-Drive's bundling offer makes it an excellent value.
